Posts

Country Chess Netherlands, first division

BikJump ended at 7th place in Geert Maeckelbergh's Country Chess First Divsion of The Netherlands . After a result like this, I feel the well-known "itch" to go back to work on my chess engine again. But first a few more improvements in Chess for Android. In any case, thanks for running the tournament Geert.

Virutor Chess for Android

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Vaclav Vavra set up a new website for Virutor Chess , an UCI engine available for Windows, ARM-based Android devices (and Linux soon to follow). The Android version imports without any issues in Chess for Android . I also ran a quick tournament between the built-in engine, BikJump, and Virutor. The results are show below.                          1    2     3   1 BikJump              *   9.5  10.0   19.5/20   2 Chess for Android   0.5   *    8.0    8.5/20   3 Virutor Chess       0.0  2.0    *     2.0.20

Cheng3 for Android

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Another engine that can be imported in  Chess for Android  just became available . Martin Sedlák released a new version of his engine Cheng3 , and Jim Ablett kindly made a binary available for ARM-based Android devices. The engine functions well, although it responds with " no GTB found" for the Gaviota endgame tablebases, even thought the cp4 versions reside in /sdcard/gtb. The results of a quick tournament with different engines varying in strength is shown below. Quite impressive!                      1          2          3          4          5         1 Stockfish 2.1      ********** 1111111111 1111111111 1111111101 1111111111 39.0/40 2 cheng3 1.07 JA     0000000000 ********** 10½0½100½1 11111½0111 1111111111 26.5/44 3 GarboChess3        0000000000 01½1½011½0 ********** 11110½½010 1111111111 21.5/40 4 Daydreamer 1.75 JA 0000000010 00000½1000 00001½½101 ********** 1½11111111 16.0/40 5 BikJump v2.1P      0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0½00000000 **********  1.0

Chess for Android 3.1.1

I just released version 3.1.1 of Chess for Android at the Android market and as direct download with the new Setup Position feature. Update : There was a minor bug in defining the halfmove clock of a position, something that is relevant only for positions affected by the fifty move rule. I have posted a fix in version 3.1.2 on my website (or you can wait for the next release through the market).

More About Setup Position

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I finished the new Setup Position feature, which I hope to release really soon. The board editor allows specifying a full FEN position, that is, a board position together with castling rights, the side-to-move, and possibly an en-passant file and halfmove clock counter (for the fifty-move rule). Touching a piece outside the board changes the "pen" to that piece. Alternative, touching a piece on the board changes the "pen" into that piece, and removes the piece from the board (useful to move pieces on the board to another position). The landscape and portrait layouts are shown below.